Sean Feucht thinks Jesus loves his invasion of a Muslim procession
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on August 10, 2026. Christian nationalist troubadour Sean Feucht is bragging about interrupting a peaceful procession of Muslims in Chicago Aug. 9. “We did a Jesus March right through the Muslim March in Chicago!!! This is crazy!!!” Feucht declared on social media Sunday. “This may be the most […]
How Christian nationalism shows up in patriotic worship services
“What a Sunday!” Houston First Baptist Church’s social media team celebrates on Facebook. “From worship to fellowship, Pocket Constitutions to patriotic tunes, we’re grateful for a church family that gathers with thankful hearts and points people to Jesus. Happy birthday, America!” That was a reference to the megachurch’s July 5 worship services where Senior Pastor Greg […]
At Rededicate 250, Chris Tomlin emerges as worship warrior
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on May 27, 2026. As my son and I walked through the press screening and out to the gathering space for Rededicate 250, I began having flashbacks to my years in a white evangelical megachurch. With a pre-roll video set to worship music filling the space with energy, […]
What I saw and heard in DC this weekend
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on May 18, 2026. Evangelicals flocked to Washington, D.C., over the weekend to attend the Trump administration’s “Rededicate 250” event on Sunday, which was billed as “rededicating” the country to being “one nation under God.” The night before Trump’s official event — funded by public money — Sean Feucht led […]
Newsboys lawsuit exposes underlying finances of CCM business
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on May 5, 2026. In the summer of 2001, I risked getting expelled by Bob Jones University for the chance to watch Michael W. Smith in concert at a Franklin Graham crusade at Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C. This was just one year removed from the university […]
Do you hear what I hear?
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 25, 2025. As Thanksgiving dinner dishes clink and clatter this Thursday afternoon, millions of Americans will open their phones and begin playing Christmas music. One of the EP’s they’ll likely see is “A Soulful Christmas,” which contains four songs by a new artist named Solomon Ray. […]
What is ‘the church’ and what is ‘Communion’?
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on October 6, 2025. Much ink has been spilled over the last decade revealing the ways white evangelical Republicans have descended into the abyss of authoritarianism. But while they claim to be the most committed to Christ and the church, their empathy-starved embrace of empire actually has led […]
Evangelical worship is the sugar that helps the poison of power go down
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on September 25, 2025. In today’s world of white supremacist politics, white evangelical worship is the sugar that helps the poison of power go down. And perhaps no event has put this more clearly on display than the Charlie Kirk memorial service. When many Christians think about Christian […]
Finally, an honest conversation about CCM and Gospel music
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on June 13, 2025. One recurring story in recent years has been Christian nationalist worship leaders wielding worship as a weapon for dominating their neighbors rather than as a vehicle for liberating them. The insurrection of January 6 unfolded as New Apostolic Reformation charismatics sang worship songs. The 2024 election […]
‘Worship warfare’ event in Seattle was planned to be violent
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on May 27, 2025. “TODAY WAS WILD!!! A RIOT BROKE OUT IN SEATTLE!!” Those were the exuberant words of revivalist Ross Johnston celebrating on Instagram in all caps as chaos erupted during a worship protest Saturday in Seattle’s Cal Anderson Park. “NO MORE CUTE WEAK CHRISTIANS, WE […]
When worship becomes an act of cruelty
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on January 22, 2025. Why are white evangelicals so conditioned for cruelty? After all, the debacle that was Donald Trump’s first day in office included ending birthright citizenship, erasing transgender and intersex people, threatening to colonize our neighbors, lying about the 2020 election results, and pardoning more than […]
Of worship warfare, theocracy and a weekend with Sean Feucht
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on October 30, 2024. Is the United States on the verge of becoming a theocracy? After covering Sean Feucht’s “Kingdom to the Capitol” event in Raleigh two weeks ago — during which Feucht embraced the term “Christian nationalism” and another pastor admitted, “We deny the right of any other kingdom […]
Before evangelical males went after Taylor Swift, they hated on Amy Grant
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on May 3, 2024. “There is a difference between being secular and being ANTI-CHRISTIAN,” wrote Shane Pruitt, National Next Gen director for the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board. The anti-Christian culprit he had in mind was not one of the many examples of male church leaders in […]
What is IHOPKC? Who is Mike Bickle? And what do I need to know?
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on January 2, 2024. It’s ironic that in a movement built on prophetic dreams where God supposedly reveals the secrets of the world, apparently nobody ever receives a dream about the credible allegations of sexual abuse going on in the church. Mike Bickle is the latest example of […]
Religion’s Power: What Makes It Work (Review)
This article originally appeared at ‘Reading Religion,’ a publication of the American Academy of Religion. In Religion’s Power: What Makes It Work, Robert Wuthnow investigates the power dynamics of religion by studying the mechanisms by which it is practiced. Drawing on his ethnographic and historical experience in sociology and religion, he proposes that religion’s power to […]
The influence of celebrity culture on the court, in the church and in journalism
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on June 22, 2023. While the Denver Nuggets defeated the Miami Heat to win the NBA title for the first time in their 47-year history last week, Southern Baptist complementarians defeated the egalitarians to win the title of “pastor” exclusively for men for the first time in their […]
Please be kind when you invite us to church on Easter
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on April 5, 2023. This is the week when church members eagerly invite family, friends and neighbors who rarely, if ever, attend church to attend Easter services. What may seem like an invitation to hope could be perceived as something else, though. Many non-churchgoers carry wounds that may […]
Questions to ask while pondering if Asbury is hosting a ‘true revival’
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on February 21, 2023. Surprise! It’s a revival! So said Thomas H. McCall, a theology professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, located adjacent to the ongoing spiritual event at Asbury University in Wilmore, Ky. “Sometimes God does what Johnathan Edwards called ‘surprising work’ and what John Wesley referred to […]
Three stories from Jesus about the danger of hierarchy and gratitude
This story originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 22, 2022. Remember the parable where Jesus warned against thankfulness in corporate worship? It’s a well-known parable in Luke 18, the first in a trilogy of scenes that question our assumptions about status and blessing in relationship with others. In the third scene, Jesus tells a rich […]
Learning from the political worship songs of our American past
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 16, 2022. The American Civil War was “a war with a musical soundtrack,” according to Christian McWhirter. And that soundtrack continues to echo through the American church today, illustrating the different life experiences of Black and white Christians in particular, once again “marching as to war,” […]
How Michael W. Smith, George W. Bush and one popular worship song expose the problem of Calvinist theology and politics
This article originally appeared on October 11, 2022 at Baptist News Global. There is a reason why one of the most influential worship songs of the past quarter century expresses a truth that could turn evangelicalism upside down and yet has been repeatedly rejected and banned by conservative evangelical complementarian Calvinists. Growing up in an independent […]
The Evolution of Consciousness and Modern Worship
This article originally appeared on September 27, 2021 at The Center for Christogenesis. The sound of a thousand people singing filled the room in perfect sync with the driving sound of the band. As we sang and played, my eyes looked around the room. These were people whose stories I knew. As a worship leader, […]
Is there a balm in singing the spirituals, and if so, who should sing them?
This article originally appeared on August 11, 2021 at Baptist News Global. In the heart of the Bloomfield neighborhood in Macon, Ga., our Baptist church and school served as the place where 300 white people came every Sunday for church and throughout the week for school. On Sunday, we had a bus ministry that provided a […]
What if we cared about Black History Month as much as Lent?
This article originally appeared on February 23, 2021 at Baptist News Global. Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s as an independent Baptist in an all-white church, the first 20 Februarys of my life came and went without any awareness of either Lent or Black History Month. Liturgy was considered something the evil Catholics did. And […]
Of wonders and wounds, cloister gardens and chasmic Christianity
This article originally appeared on January 5, 2021 at Baptist News Global. The day I walked out of church, I had just finished assisting our children’s church lesson about how God created the world in six literal days. God had put the first two humans in a garden with one rule, and then sent them into […]
Worship event at National Mall illustrates merger of evangelical music and politics
This article originally appeared on September 29, 2020 at Baptist News Global. It was billed as a worship rally, but it could have been a political rally. Last Saturday, Sept. 26, nearly 100,000 evangelicals gathered at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for the stated purpose of worshiping God. They were led by Vice President Mike Pence speaking and by Michael W. Smith in singing. Among […]
My journey through purity culture and Christian worship music
This article originally appeared on September 4, 2020 at Baptist News Global. The year was 1993. I was a sweaty junior high kid who had recently gotten my first stick of deodorant and had begun experiencing sensations in my body that felt both good and confusing. But one night, as my brothers and I were laying […]
Eucharistic Presence For a Church in Exile
This article originally appeared on July 24, 2020 at Worship Overflow and reflects my desires at the time for churches entering into the Covid-19 pandemic. Little did the Church know at the beginning of March 2020, the opportunity that was about to present itself to us. Many of us have lived our entire lives attending […]
The Jesus-Formed, Embodied Worship of a Black Holiness Church (1895-1913)
This article originally appeared on June 12, 2020 on Medium. It was a paper that I submitted for a class at Northern Seminary. Having spent my entire life in overwhelmingly white churches, it wasn’t until I had reached my twenties that I started to become aware of the water I was swimming in. I had […]
Worshiping With Our Universal Family
This article originally appeared on March 28, 2020 at Worship Overflow and reflects my desires at the time for churches entering into the Covid-19 pandemic. As the coronavirus spreads throughout the world, many churches are canceling their services for the foreseeable future. I obviously have not done an exhaustive study of how churches are handling […]
Scientifically Precise Worship
This article originally appeared on March 16, 2020 at BioLogos. It was an interview about my album, “Consider the Stars.” “Creativity is the force of the imagination being formed into something true and beautiful by the world’s constraints. You can see it is a sufficient generalization of both science and art,” explains Tom McLeish, the author […]